How Ridley Scott, Christopher Plummer saved ‘All the Money in the World’

Pair worked fast to replace Spacey’s footage, get film ready for release

Old guys rule ain’t just a T-shirt slogan, as far as Ridley Scott, who turned 80 at the end of last month, and Christopher Plummer, who celebrated his 88th on Dec. 13, are concerned.

The English director and Canadian actor pulled off the unprecedented act of reshooting massive portions of “All the Money in the World” in about nine days around Thanksgiving and cutting the new footage into the kidnapping thriller in time to almost make the movie’s original release date of Dec. 22. It’s opening 72 hours later, on Christmas Day.

More or less the true story of the 1973 kidnapping in Italy of oil fortune heir John Paul Getty III (played by Charlie Plummer, no relation to Chris, in the movie), “All the Money” was put in commercial jeopardy when Kevin Spacey — who had portrayed the victim’s billionaire grandfather J. Paul Getty under heavy old age makeup— was swept up in Hollywood’s explosion of sexual misconduct allegations at the end of October.

Production on the two-time Oscar-winning actor’s hit Netflix series “House of Cards” was soon halted and Spacey written out of the next season. “All the Money” was in the can, though, and scheduled to be the closing night gala presentation at L.A.’s prestigious AFI Fest. Sony pulled the picture from the film festival at the 11th hour, and it was generally assumed that, if the movie ever even saw the light of a theater screen, it wouldn’t possibly be this year or anytime soon after.

Scott had another idea, though. He quickly convinced Sony and the film’s producers he could pull off reshoots and re-edit in time for Christmas, then got on the phone to the people making “Money” co-stars Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams’ latest productions to gauge the performers’ availability for portions of the nine-day lightning round he was planning (his show wound up reimbursing the others for missed actor days). The same lush locations in England and Italy where he’d previously shot the scenes with Spacey had to be secured and dressed again, too.

All that worked out with never-before-seen speed.

“It would have affected the performance of my film, for sure,” Scott says of the Spacey scandal, and why he insisted on doing something so radical in response. “Already, it’s a difficult film to market because it’s intelligent. It’s not shootin’ guns and drugs and wrecking cars and stuff like that. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with any of that, I do that a bit myself. But this is a special, true theatrical piece. I just thought it’s got to have its fair shot and we can’t have it go out like this.”

Of course, Scott needed a new J. Paul Getty, too. He’d previously managed to cobble together a credible performance via movie magic when Oliver Reed died during the production of “Gladiator,” but Reed’s role in that film was much smaller and less integral than Spacey’s was in this. Although Spacey had been his first choice for the role, Scott had considered Plummer as a backup early on; he’d been impressed by the actor’s portrayal of newsman Mike Wallace for “The Insider,” and felt “All the Money” had a similar journalistic, suspenseful vibe to it.

The “Sound of Music” daddy was in New York last month when his L.A. agents let him know what was going on. Scott was on a plane from London toNew York soon after, and director and actor met for all of 30 minutes.

“I was immensely taken with him and I’d always wanted to work with Ridley because he’s such a first-rate director,” Plummer notes. “So here was my chance. He gave me the script, I read it overnight and said let’s go.

“It was quite a big part and we only had nine days, but I was thrilled because I, like Ridley, love taking challenges that I might make a fool of myself with,” Plummer adds. “So I’m used to that, and in the theater particularly, you always come up with some kind of emergency. I was a little worried about getting all my lines down in such a short time. I had three days to pack and there were no days off, or the days off were traveling from London to Rome. So I’m glad my theater training held me in good stead, that I was able to learn quickly and do it.”

Those who’ve compared Spacey’s footage from the film’s original trailer to Plummer performing the same scenes have noticed a much more approachable, well, approach to the latter’s interpretation of Getty, at the time the richest man in the world but notoriously miserly nonetheless (when it came to people anyway; he preferred to spend his money on the artworks that now reside in several L.A. museums that bear his name than to pay the ransom for his grandson).

Again, Plummer employed an old theater trick.

“Getty was a cold figure to begin with, so when you get a cold figure to play, the first thing you must do is to make him as warm as you possibly can,” the actor explains. “It’s sort of a long-standing rule: If you’re playing Iago, which is the arch-villain of all time, you’ve got to make him as charming and lovable as you can. Then he is more frightening as a result, and the same thing with Getty. So I used that rule — not really knowing what the hell I was doing! — and it sort of worked its way into the script.”

Historical accounts of Getty are limited, and of course Plummer had no time to research his subject in any case. Interestingly, he had casually met Getty III at jet-set parties in Rome before the kidnapping.

“It’s amazing that, at the end of my life, I go back to playing his grandfather,” he muses. “I did recognize a sort of classic size about the creature. He is of a classic stature. But I wanted very much to find some humanity in that (SOB).”

Plummer adds that he felt sorry for Wahlberg and Williams, who had to drop plans and scramble to replay their scenes as, respectively, Getty’s security expert Fletcher Chace and his steely daughter-in-law Gail Harris, mother of the abducted 16-year-old. But he also notes that they had a good time despite the time-crunching pressure.

Scott confirms that.

“I try to make the whole bloody thing fun,” the “Alien,” “Blade Runner,” Thelma & Louise” and “The Martian” director affirms. “You have to, because we move so fast and no one stops.”